My pre-order finally showed up today. I only got to play two hours or so but so far I'm digging it. I stopped playing on the boss mission of Chapter 2 so hopefully I'll finish that tonight and then try some live action. My live tag is gwartok if anyone's up for a game around midnight est or so..

Sounding good. No demo for me though and I really wanted to try and do that move the Bioware guys did in the Gamespot interview that caused their opponent to explode. :twisted: Guess I'll just have to wait until next month.

It turns out there's a hidden demo of this on the Dec 04 OXM disc so I have some impressions to share. Unfortunately they're kind of limited as the demo is in japanese so I had to navigate it by guesswork and don't have any idea what the hell was said. Fortunately once I got started the tutorial mission highlighted the buttons you needed to push and where you needed to go well enough that I could figure out the basics and play a few missions.

I didn't do any card management but based on the battles I'd say that portion of the IGN review of the import is spot-on. They're fast paced and the environment is destructable for the most part. During one of the missions I was battling in the atrium of an old building. My target was standing beneath the 2nd floor walkway when I fired a fireball at him that missed and hit the walkway support column next to him. The column disintegrated and a 30 foot section of so of concrete walkway came crashing down on his head :twisted: I was also able to do some jump attack that sent me in the air for a few seconds and left a decent size crater in the ground when I came crashing down. Unfortunately I haven't been able to land that one on an actually opponent yet.

Anyway, so far I think this is looking like a winner. The battles were a lot of fun and it looks great. The card management is still an if but as long as it allows you to customize your toon without horrific balancing issues it'll pass. If it adds some depth like the review says and makes you think a little bit even better. I'm glad I pre-ordered, I think this would have been a steal for $20, throw in the $20 coupon on my next game and it's a no brainer.

Gamespot is offering a $20 rebate on this $20 title today only and you can get free shipping too. The $20 is a gamespot coupon but since I wanted this anyway and I plan on pre-ordering Jade Empire soon I figure this pretty much makes Phantom Dust pretty much a freebie.

The US version of this should be out next week and is only $20. This is isn't usually my cup of tea but I'm hearing some good things about it and i'm in the mood for something different so I'm thinking I might give it a try. A review of the imported japanese version got a pretty solid score from IGN and supported both Japanese and English. It's probably a long shot but has anyone played it?

I use the Bright House DVR and can't imagine going back to non-DVR viewing. Even my wife, who was tough to convince that it was worth $7 a month, is a convert now. My only complaint is that it can't adjust for sporting events that run late so we missed some Arrested Developments when sunday afternoon NFL went long.

I've got an xbox headed my way from a trade and plan on picking up xbox live in some form asap. I was looking at the year kit that comes with crimson skies and a set of headphones but I noticed the headphones are corded. After getting spoiled by my Wavebird controllers for my old cube I think I really want to go with wireless accessories.

So I'll probably be picking up a wireless controller and headphones soon too. Does anyone have reasonable priced recommendations on either? Also, if I go with the wireless headphones is there a live package that comes without headphones?

I signed up for Vonage a month ago to try it out and I'm going to be cancelling my standard phone line today. It's worked fine so far and I can't tell a difference in quality between it and my standard phone line.

My only qualm about it is the fact we may not have a phone during a power outage. I'm going to pick up a UPS so I can keep things going on my end, hopefully roadrunner has plenty on their end too. It's not a big enough concern though that I'm going to continue to pay $50-$75 more a month for phone service than Vonage is charging me.

Well Farscape comes on today Sunday at 9pm; 11pm; and 1:00am. This is good so we can all get a chance to catch the show live. Critical for those of us who typically record the wrong channel or wrong part of the day :lol:

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up. I have to work until midnight tonight and had forgot to set up the VCR to record it. I was going to ask the wife to record it but that's pretty much a crap shoot..

Since this is a mini-series I'm assuming it's going to be more than one night. If so, what nights are they airing the rest of them?

If he took a bunch of Ebayers at the same time I'm wondering if he just went rogue or if he died? If the bills were paid on his site it would keep on running and glancing at it I couldn't tell if it had been updated recently, all the titles are older so it's hard to say.

It's probably unlikey and he's just a thief. The idea just popped in my head after reading an article a week or two ago about a guy who died and no one noticed for 2 years because he had all his bills set up with automatic payment.....

mmorpg.com is having an eq2 beta give away tomorrow and registration is free. I registered there a few months ago because they're always having contests like this and they occasionally have longer than normal trials for various mmorpg's.

It doesn't make me feel better either. I'm really so sick of the entire fiasco now that I won't be touching it for months after release, if ever.

On a side note, I think any periodicals reviewing an unfinished product are unethical and screwing their readers. Wasn't there a big stink about driv3r just earlier this year because several rags posted glowing reviews of a buggy preview that was going to be "fixed" before release? HL2 might come through and deliver but I think sometime soon alot of mags/sites are going to get seriously burned whoring themselves out for reviews like this.

The only toon I have on Virtue is The Hexadecimator, who just hit 12 today. I've mostly been playing on Pinnacle and Justice but I don't have any chars over 20 so if you don't mind low levels joining I'll plan on moving to Virtue full-time.

On most of the missions it pays to play defensively. I would typically hang out near my starting point and wait for the enemy to come to me. Be sure to grab all his souls ASAP. It's really the key to the game. Think of it as a war of attrition and the more souls you can steal, the stronger you become.

That's pretty much what I was going to say so I'll second that.

Quote from: "warning"

I know people who have played through the entire game without ever figuring out there is a pause button.

There's a pause button? LOL

At least once save your game and take time to hang out and watch the sacrifice rituals! Too cool. :twisted:

Well, I hate to see it go, especially like this but at least it's done and we can move on now. There was alot of talk about what the community could do to get the site active again after Bill left and the silence to that was pretty damn deafening imho. Since I'm getting the impression that CG will be our new home hopefully those talented members who were offering their time to keep GG active will do the same to make this an even better one.

Hell, we all know gonegold has really been dead for awhile now and the forums/community were the only thing keeping it alive. If you get the forum archives up and a buy-in from the gonegold regulars that this board/site is the successor I think you can count on most of us staying. I know I will.

The short, mid, and long term goals sound great to me. With the GG front page dormant for so long now anyways any PC game related stuff you add is just icing on the cake.